Summer 2019: Venice
June 14th: Venice
Today I was a bit more jet lagged than I bargained for, so once we landed and walked the island for a few hours, I headed back to our apartment to rest before dinner. Crazy enough after we landed in Venice, we walked down to the main floor and caught our water taxi to the island straight from the airport. Our boat taxi pulled outside of our apartment and we stepped right into the lobby of the apartments. We walked the town for a short while, stopped for a glass of wine and appetizers and then hopped on a private gondola. We loved our gondola driver as he explained ornate history of the channels that we might have never found out. This town has been amazing to get lost in, but always be able to find our way back home, if that makes any sense at all. Venice is composed of 400 bridges and 118 islands so it’s simple to become turned around but easy to always find a bridge to get you back. After our gondola tour, we found a quaint place for pasta and wine and preceded to navigate home. Today was filled with lots of pasta, wandering and wine bottles to go.
June 15th: Venice
An early morning it was, catching our water taxi at 9am to go meet our driver, Roberta, on the main land to drive to our Prosecco tour in the Italian hills. During our drive, Roberta pulled over for “the best cappuccino in the world” according to her, and trust me it was not like the claim Buddy the Elf had for the “world’s best cup of coffee”; it was quite nice and definitely needed for perk up for our tasting. We finally made it up to the hill where the family founded vineyard named Gregoletto was awaiting. Our guide was the granddaughter of the founder, her name was Ana. To make a big world smaller, Ana said she enjoyed listening to a band from Ohio! We tasted 3 different wines the vineyard produced and snacked on wonderful local cheeses, fruits and nuts. We met back with Roberta, who we now named “no fun Nancy” as she kept a tight schedule and left no room for play. As we drove down the hillside, we stopped for a lunch consisting of fresh pasta and cheese and, of course, paired with Prosecco. We tasted 3 different desserts: tiramisu, brown sugar gelato with alcohol soaked pineapples and a meringue with cherry gelato. Roberta said it was time to leave and we all napped the entire ride back to Venice. Once back to the island, we opted to walk back to the apartment instead of taxiing, stopping for a drink at a deck on the sea and meeting 2 couples: one from Oklahoma and one from New York at the said dock bar. Along the winding roads and many bridges, we found the oldest bridge in Venice and grabbed small bites of pizza and salad for dinner.
June 16th: Venice and Murano
Today, Lisa was avid about going to the island of Murano, where genuine Murano glass is made. We walked through San Marco Square and set off for the public water taxi, when we were approached by a man who worked for one of the glass producing factories over on Murano. This was a textbook do not get into a foreign man’s water taxi situation, but he explained more that they were offering free rides over to the island to combat their issue of Chinese produced glass being sold as true “Murano” glass on the mainland. It didn’t take much convincing to have Lisa get on his boat, as she was bound and determined to get the full glass making experience. All ended well once we got to the island and saw a private demonstration where the master glass maker made a horse and water pitcher. We dove deeper into this small island, pulling off for a light lunch of pasta (imagine that…and I’m not even sure I could call this light), gelato and shopped in various glass stores. We opted to take the public water taxi back and disembark as soon as we were back to Venice to see a different walk home. A quaint rooftop bar was spotted along the way, where we were the only guests of this rooftop wonderland. After cleaning up for dinner and having a wonderful spaghetti and smoked ricotta dish, we headed home to pack for our train to Florence.
See you in Florence!
XOXO,
Kenzie Rae
